06/03/2025
As photographers and artists we spend a large portion of our development chasing technical aspirations. We spend days researching lighting, lenses, camera specs. We approach everything with a technical ex*****on first & then only pay attention to the rest secondary. At least that was how I was for many, many years.
This campaign for Allan Gray was a pivotal turning point for me as a photographer, because the brief from the agency had everything to do with an emotional cue & zero technical requirements. On top of that, it involved kids who don’t really ‘fake’ things like an adult actor/model would.
My approach was also one of my biggest lessons. I had to forget technicality & rather put all my effort into creating the emotion. How did we do that? For starters, we didn’t ’fake’ it. “Minutes are longer when you’re 10” was the accompanying copy with the frame. So we put our model in the situation that made him really feel this. And we kept him in that space until he FELT the exact emotion we needed. We engineered the situation, but the emotion was real. No amount of lighting or new f1.8 lens technicality was going to create the photograph. Emotion created the photograph.
So… next time you’re wondering how you can get something different and more engaging in your photography, remember it’s not about the camera or your technical ability. It’s in your ability to create, evoke or connect emotionally.
What’s your thoughts, have you found this to be true in your experience?
